SafeAir

Inspiration

Originally I wanted to use the curiebot to find and trace a gas leak but since I didn't have a curiebot I had to improvise. This led me to tacking on the intel edison to one of the water bottle boxes. After realizing that my demo would of be simulated I pivoted to a gas leak detector. Hours later I realized I had essentially created a regular gas detector which while cool was far from impressive leading me to implementing more and bringing it into the 21st century. My final product was a smart gas detector that you are able to interact with from anywhere, regardless of if you have a smartphone or not.

How I built it

I used the intel edison along with the MQ3 and MQ5 gas sensor, but any gas sensors would work with it. I programmed it mostly with python utilizing apis from twilio, flask, ngrok, and pyupm_gas.

Challenges I ran into

Integrating the twilio/flask combo threw a lot of errors in receiving, parsing, and replying to texts as well as sending out the automated text messages. There wasn't a lot of documentation and the docs out there were a bit out of date so it took a lot of trial and error.

What I learned

I learned about how patience and hard work can pay off and even more importantly I learned that there comes a point where it is better to pivot and expand from there then to keep pouring resources into your original idea.